Lake Charles man accused of stalking speaks out

LAKE CHARLES, LA (KPLC) - A Lake Charles man was arrested and charged for cyberstalking and harassment, but now he's saying those accusations aren't true.

Andrew Benoit was arrested and booked into the Calcasieu Correctional Center. He was charged with filing or maintaining false public record, cyberstalking and improper telephone communications or harassment.

Benoit was released on a $10,000 bond.

Benoit said after a falling out with a friend, the two began exchanging words with one another via text messaging and Facebook. He said after the split, someone put his phone number on a public page on the social media site. Benoit believes that person was his friend.

"I went to the Sheriff's Department with that because I was getting like thousands and thousands of harassing phone calls from just anonymous people that neither one of us know because my number was posted on Facebook," he said.

He filed a harassment complaint, but after further investigation, detectives at the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office found pages and pages of text messages from Benoit that were sent to the woman. This ultimately lead to Benoit's arrest for harassment.

"That's not true," Benoit said. "I didn't start, if you want to call it, harassing. I didn't start any of that until after we broke up our friendship and then both of us were harassing each other."

Both harassing the other and only one paid the price. But Benoit is sticking to his belief that he wasn't the one who started the harassment.

"Someone sent me thousands of harassing text messages, calls and voicemails. I'm not just making that up. I've got better things to do with my time than just make something like that up," Benoit said.

Perhaps, but even after investigation, detectives found no proof or evidence that Benoit was being stalked or harassed.